Crochet Basics: Getting to Know Your Yarn

November 1, 2015

You’re probably all exhausted from all of my breathless Halloween posts these past few weeks, so let’s change it up a bit. We’ve been welcoming some new readers to our blog and our newly revamped social media pages for the past few months, so I thought that today we could go back to basics, Christina Aguilera-style.

Let’s talk yarn!

Yarn is most commonly made of cotton, wool or acrylic and is made from strands that are twisted together into a thicker string, which are rolled into a ball called a skein. Yarns are differentiated by their weights/thickness, material types, and color.

To determine the best type of yarn for your project, consider all of those factors when you’re shopping for yarn.

Here’s a very handy guide to determining the weight of your yarn from the Craft Yarn Council. This will help you decide what type of yarn you should be hunting for when you’re doing a specific project, as well as recommended hook sizes. They have a ton of amazing resources for all of your basic crochet needs. This standards document has a whole bunch of excellent and clear charts and resources for all of your beginner questions as well.

To get you started with a super simple crochet stitch, check out this great video from Ayanared on YouTube who shows you how to chain! The abbreviation for chain in a crochet pattern is (ch), so there’s one step down in trying to master the tricky language of crochet!!

Here are a couple of our handy free patterns that are perfect for starting out, to help you figure out what kind of yarn you prefer to work with!

Our Crocodile Stitch Flower pattern will work with any yarn weight, so you can test out a few to see what you’re the most comfortable with. I like how it looks in a heavier weight as it gives the flower a nice sturdy look if you want to stick it on a hat or scarf! You could even put it on a pin back and use it as a brooch or hair clip!

My favorite free pattern that we offer is the Crocodile Stitch Baby Blanket, which would be a great project for some light weight yarn. The gauge we suggest for this pattern is 3 and it’s an intermediate level.

We’re working on getting our YouTube page up to speed, so keep an eye on it and make sure that you subscribe so you don’t miss any updates! You can follow along at Bonita Patterns Videos!

Our Client Feature this week comes to us from Facebook and it made my whole day. Jennifer Rivas shared her daughter’s absolutely beautiful flower girl dress inspired by a Bonita pattern! Thank you so much for sharing, Jennifer, and congratulations!!

See you next week! We have some awesome new things in the works that I can’t wait to share with you.

I’m glad you liked it. The most popular yarn to make bikinis and swimwear is Cascade Fixation, because it’s mostly cotton, but also has elastic in it for better fitting. Some people also use just 100% cotton thread. Basically, the best fiber for swimwear is cotton.